Originally Posted by
prj71
This statement makes it clear you don't understand it. It's been explained to you by numerous folks here why a dedicated gravel bike makes sense for some folks but maybe not you. It doesn't make it silly just because you don't have the same use as others. Some of race with them and some of us ride gravel that is not a chunky as what is shown in your pictures. Between the use for a race and or easy gravel your mountain bike would be undergunned for a race or overgunned for the mild gravel roads. I've been in your shoes thinking the MTB should cover it for me. It didn't.
First you haven’t been in my shoes because I didn’t loan them to you.
Again, I don’t race. I ride my mountain bike on gravel because I consider it an adequate tool for the job. Often, given where I live, I find it to be a much better tool than a road oriented bike. I can continue further up the road when the going gets hairy and I have a better time coming back down. I’ve done rigid bikes on many of the places that I ride suspended bikes on now. Suspension is better. If I want to go rigid, I can just lock out the suspension but why bother carrying all that to the top of a hill if you aren’t going to use it on the way down.
I’ve ridden many thousands of miles on a mountain bike…both rigid and suspended… on the same kinds of roads. I don’t find the road oriented bikes to have many advantages over a mountain bike. I do find them to have enough disadvantages that I don’t see the point.